Failure To Connect Please Try Again Later,
by jsdeanis
Summary: Susan's thoughts on her brother's return.


Title: Failure To Connect. Please Try Again Later.  
Author: Jules Summary: A sister's thoughts.  
Rating: PG Spoilers: Terra Firma Distribution: Anywhere, just ask.  
Disclaimer: Not mine - mores the pity.

A.N.: Set during Terra Firma. Double whammy of my first ever fanfic and un-beta'd. All mistakes my own, constructive criticism welcomed. Actually any review will do!

She didn't know this man.

Black leather shielding his body as he shielded his emotions. A familiar face with a stranger's eyes.

He had Mom's eyes, innocent and hopeful yet resigned to the pain.

The loping gait was unchanged but it was a sharp contrast with the defensive posture he adopted amongst them. Controlled movements, always on guard. Tense, constrained energy, muscles poised, classic fight or flight reflexes finely honed.

He'd fight. She'd seen the gun strapped to his thigh - right hand hovering, caressing, reassuring himself. Seen him hide the thing under his pillow. A weapon giving the comfort he wouldn't allow his family to give.

If she could bring herself to comfort him.

So different from before, when his studied nonchalance, his deliberate denial, his frightened withdrawl from their mother's suffering had enraged her, made her want to scream at him. Frightened for him, wanting him to be prepared for the coming hurt, not to ignore it, letting it blindside him, unprepared for the intensity of the pain. To defend himself.

He'd learnt that lesson it seemed. She didn't want to know what had happened to school him so well, to mark him so deeply.

She'd grieved for him. Olivia buried in her pain at the loss of her idolized big brother, whilst their father had denied his only son's death, they'd left her to arrange a service for her only brother. Memorial not burial. Nothing but memories. Officials offering condolences and the press, uninterested in the farscape project untill it's conceiver's death, gathered like ghouls outside the family home. Ugly questions, conspiracy theories and inquests - pilot error or system fault? A body blow to the space programme John had loved so dearly. She'd fielded their comments with grace and composure. Said everything they'd wanted to hear, all the while careening from icy numbness to bitter regret. Echoes of their mother's death. She endured though, after all, she'd trained all her life for this event. Her earliest memories of her beloved daddy kissing her goodbye as he went to embrace his dreams, chase his glory to the heavens, the earth hadn't the power to confine him.

John was his father's son.

The amazed disbelief when her father had phoned to impart the news of John's return was still fresh in her mind, still felt in the full body shivers whenever she looked up at night, glad the city lights obscured all but the brightest of stars. It's too big. She hadn't heard from her dad since a couple of days after the first satellite had detected the then unknown craft in orbit. The panic of this unexpected, univited visitation had her clutching at her husband and smothering her teenage son in fear. When IASA had sent a rocket up to make contact with the ship she couldn't have conceived it would have an even greater personal impact than it already had. She remembered her father's excitement and grateful joy, compared it to now.

She hadn't expected this.

She'd thought he'd swagger back into their lives, bear hugs and tearful smiles for everybody, streamers, trumpets and a damn ticker-tape parade. He'd be telling tales of grand space adventures like he used to recount his high-school football games. Emphasizing his glories with broad gestures and winning smiles, his daring escapades and humour charming everyone in his radius. John had always drawn people into his orbit - they couldn't escape his force of personality - their worlds revolved around him. Instead she learnt of his life through heavily censored official reports and his fellow travellers accounts, made palatable for family viewing.

He was quiet. Watching them all, somehow always apart even as he was the focus of all the attention. So unlike how she remembered she began to doubt herself, her recollections of him. She wondered if she had gotten everything wrong and fabricated a new John in her mind to replace the one she had lost. Maybe his eyes had always been this wary, maybe he had always shied from people's touch. Had his mouth always been that hard? She remembered smirks and grins. Teeth and gums and lips, laughter lines, crinkled eyes, and smiles stretched wide. Surely she hadn't made that up. She remembered him playing with their baby sister, making time for her and including her even during his most petulant teenage tantrums. She remembered he'd fixed the kid next door's bike after an accident, helped her move home, held his baby nephew so carefully, cradled him protectively whilst his smile had lit the room. She had known that man. He'd annoyed her and angered her. He had tested her patience and tried her temper. She had loved him but didn't know how to connect with him.

She was her father's daughter.

This new John had been forged in the fire of the stars, tempered by the blasts of pulse pistols. The sensitive scientist's heart now encased in a warrior's body. She didn't know how to relate and he wasn't giving anyone any clues.

He never used to shut up. It had driven her nuts during their shared childhood. An endless stream of questions, hows and whys and wheres and whos untill her teeth ached from clenching her jaw so hard. Now the silence gave her a headache and the tension promised her dentist a new SUV, but she was thankful for it, afraid to hear his explanations.

She saw glimpses of her brother only by watching him interact with his new friends. When he watched football, drank beer and high-fived the tattooed Luxan as they sat in the safehouse, she saw for a moment John and DK slouched in their dorm room cheering their teams and ogling cheerleaders. Olivia was now a grey skinned girl. The gentle kindness, the empathy and humour her brother showed the Nebari echoed the tender closeness John and Livvy had shared and now struggled to reclaim. The fond contempt for the Dominar, the bemused humouring of the three-eyed witch, the cautious testing of the Kalish red head. John showed more emotion in five minutes with these aliens than he had in the week he had spent in her company.

She felt so small here, self concious in a way she hadn't felt since she was a teenager. They made her feel ashamed. She had thought herself broad minded, open to possibility, but it seemed she had held the same preconceptions of many, had held tightly if subconciously to the idea of human superiority. Now like many others she was afraid when these notions were overthrown. These creatures made her nervous. Their mother would have had the time of her life. She would have adored Chiana and mothered the strangely gentle Ka D'Argo, telling dirty jokes all the while. She would have discussed history with Sikozu, debated till her throat was sore and then kept on going. She would have cooked old family recipes for Rygel and argued philosophy with Noranti, arm wrestled her over religion. She had never had trouble connecting.

She would have loved Aeryn Sun. John loved Aeryn Sun.

The striking soldier looked so human it was hard to remember she was an alien. She thought that made it worse, made John hurt so badly, maybe he kept forgetting. Four years gone and even longer since she had spoken to her brother about any truly emotional matter, she still recognised this brand of pain. Understood these battle scars even as she recoiled, willfully ignored, the physical ones. The ones you love can hurt you the most was a cliche tried and true. John had given his heart to a woman who by all accounts had no emotional experience beyond a warrior's life, with different expectations. A true alien. But this alien loved her brother just as fiercely as he did her. They circled each other. Never quite connecting. Hurting each other through misunderstandings and failed communication.

She knew the feeling.

John was more at home with these people than his own family, his flesh and blood. He shared a connection with them. They understood him, knew his scars and the stories behind them, understood his moods and how to change them. They could joke and touch and hurt and cry with him.

He wouldn't allow his family that right.

She didn't know this man.

He wouldn't let her know the man he had become.

He had forged bonds with his fellow crew. Made them family. Cared and loved and hated with them, for them. Held them together, hoped for their future.

He was their mother's son.

She knew she couldn't stay. Couldn't keep trying and failing so miserably to find common ground with her brother. She couldn't take another conversation about the weather. It wasn't supposed to be this hard. She knew she was a coward.

So she would make her excuses, blame a need to return to work as the reason for her departure that no-one would believe and no-one would call her on, too busy trying too hard to connect. She'd endure the water cooler gossip, the awe and suspicion from her workmates. Would be glad she was a Coleman rather than a Crichton, she badly needed that extra distance even as far away as John was already. The name was too heavy. But she'd leave her only child and when her brother left again she'd watch the tapes untill every single word, every head tilt, hand gesture, and facial expression was memorized. She would hope for his return. Hope for his happiness and his peace. She would pray for him and his family - Crichton, Coleman and Moyan. Would love him regardless.

She was their mother's daughter.

She was this man's big sister.

fin. 


End file.
